From the 24th October 2012, Tom Watson MP at Prime Minister’s Questions.

“The evidence file – used to convict paedophile Peter Righton – if it still exists, contains clear intelligence of a widespread paedophile ring. One of it’s members boasts of his links to a senior aide of a former Prime minister, who says he could smuggle indecent images of children from abroad. The leads were not followed up, but if the files still exist, I want to ensure that the Metropolitan Police secure the evidence, re-examine it, and investigate clear intelligence suggesting a powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and Number 10″.

Did the Met recover this evidence ?

Yes they did ! Seven boxes of it, recovered from a repository in Leicestershire !

More on this later but I’d just like to take a little time to thank The Needle team member Daedalus. Daedalus works quietly behind the…

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More responses have come in from Tory MPs to the letter I asked readers to send to their coalition MPs about their government’s blatant lies on disability benefit claimants, NHS spending and the effects of their benefits cap – for which the government was unequivocally rebuked by the UK Statistics Authority.

These two responses (actually three, but two of them are by the same MP to different constituents) come from two senior Treasury figures – Whip Robert Goodwill and Economic Secretary Sajid Javid (who doesn’t have a good record on truth-telling in Parliament himself).

The response from both of these MPs – near-identical responses – show either a complete inability to read, or a deeply worrying and revealing arrogance toward their constituents and the country in general.

This blog mentioned a few days ago that LieDS and his department have decided to withhold up-to-date information on the number of deaths involving people going through the assessment process for benefits (via Atos), who have been refused benefit or who are appealing against a decision.

Vox Political has put in a Freedom of Information request, requiring the DWP to produce that information, and we know that many of you have followed that lead.

Mr Miller has been in the fortunate position to write an authoritative inquiry – as the person who made the original request all the way back in (and this will make your eyes water if you don’t know about it already) November last year!

“On November 6, 2012, I wrote to your department regarding the number of Incapacity Benefit claimants who had died that year,” he writes.

The letter goes on to detail the DWP’s reticence in responding, until he received a reply on June 24 stating that there is “no intention” of releasing an updated version of the statistics.

Mr Miller’s appraisal of the situation, while polite, goes straight for the jugular, and if I were Iain Pretentious Smith, the Secretary would be in a right State after reading it.

“If your department is too understaffed and underfunded to compile such data, then I fully understand and sympathize,” writes Mr Miller- in the knowledge that the DWP has thousands upon thousands of employees and spends billions of pounds every year on pointless money-wasting projects like the Work Programme (see recent Vox Political articles for the current state of that road crash).

“However, I must confess that while I have been very patient and reasonable regarding this matter over a period of many months, I am succumbing to the belief that your department is resorting to petty obstructionism — even a full-fledged cover-up — because the mortality of the sick and disabled has become too politicized for the Tories to cope with”.

That’s a crippling blow, right there. Now that the observation has been made, it will be interesting to watch Smith squirm out of answering it. So let’s keep asking him until he does.

“I suspect that there has been a staggering increase in the number of benefit claimant deaths since November 2011.”

This, of course, is the killing blow. We all want the answer to that one. A proper answer. A straight answer.

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Section 102 and Schedule 11 of the Welfare Reform Act, (Clause 99) – Power to require revision before appeal.

If anyone left in doubt that this Government’s policies are grossly unfair, and are intentionally punishing sick and disabled people – some of whom are amongst the most vulnerable of our citizens – you need look no further than Clause 99 for verification. Currently, claimants who are found fit for work can continue to receive Employment Support Allowance (ESA) at the basic rate by immediately lodging an appeal if they think the decision is wrong. ESA will then remain in payment until the appeal is decided.

That is all set to change, however, under Clause 99 of the Welfare Reform Bill, intended to be effective from April 2013 – and according to the Department for Work and Pensions, from October 2013 that includes ESA and DLA decisions. Under the new rules, claimants…

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Some of you will remember how quickly David Cameron, David Mellor and other big-name Conservatives moved to hush up any implication that Tories might have been involved in child sex abuse after the Jimmy Savile scandal broke last year. Now the half-brother of a prominent Tory MP has been arrested by police following leads on historic child sex abuse, passed to them by Labour MP Tom Watson.
This issue has not gone away, but the right-wing media will try to keep it quiet for as long as possible. Don’t allow it.

The arrest is the first as a result of inquiries by Operation Fairbank set up after Labour MP Tom Watson passed allegations of child sexual abuse dating back to the 1980s to the Met Police.It follows two arrests under Operation Fernbridge, which is looking into child abuse in the London borough of Richmond and at Elm Guest House in Barnes where it is alleged that prominent VIPS abused boys.

I would have said this article was behind the times, because Vox Political mentioned increases in absolute poverty a couple of weeks ago. The difference is that, it seems, the DWP press release claimed disability poverty was down by 100,000 – but am I right in thinking this report is saying that’s RELATIVE poverty, whereas ABSOLUTE poverty was up by the same amount?
In other words, the DWP has been cooking the books YET AGAIN?
How long do we have to endure this continual deceitfulness from an organisation that should be legally bound to produce the facts, in full?

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According to newspaper reports, Julie Bailey, founder of the so-called patients’ campaign group Cure the NHS (Cure), has left Stafford – supposedly ‘driven out’ by a ‘hate campaign’ orchestrated by the people of the town who are said to hate her for her ‘tireless campaigning’, driven by grief for her mother and others who died at Stafford hospital and her desire, as she has claimed and as she has named her group, to ‘cure’ the NHS:

Supposedly.

Ms Bailey has been portrayed as a long-suffering heroine whose ‘Breaks’ cafe near the town centre was shunned by the townspeople, bringing her to the verge of penury. Such is the supposed nobility of her cause. As she claimed in a Daily Mirror interview:

And now she’s broke because her café in the town that used to provide her with a decent ­living is all but deserted these days – boycotted by locals…